It Wasn’t That She Minded

She stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
‘There are rats,’ she said. ‘They’ve got a nest. There are babies. I saw one. They’ve made a tunnel to get in.’
She waited for the question. When it didn’t come, she gave the answer anyway.
‘In the compost.’
She waited.
‘It’s not that I mind rats, per se. I mean, everything has its place. Just not in the compost.’
She waited. ‘You put cooked food in there, didn’t you?’
He set down the remote on the arm of the battered over-stuffed chair and grunted to his feet.
She wore rubber gloves to dispose of the empty poison container. Just in case.
That night, she cried herself to sleep. It was his fault. The cooked food. After all, they had their place. And they were just babies.